348 



NA TURE 



{Feb. 7, il 



fthe south-east being a prolongation of those of Wale^. Later 

 in date as regards the underground movements that determined 

 their site, are the mountainous ridges of Kerry and Cork. These 

 are hical uplifts which, though on a small scale, are by far the 

 bc<it examples in Britain of true mountain stnicture. The Old 

 Ked Sandstone and Carboniferous rocks have there been thrown 

 into broad f dds and troughs which run in a general east and we-t 

 direction. In some cases, as in the Knockmealdown Mountain, 

 the arch is composed entirely of Old Red Sandstone flanked 

 with Carboniferous strata. But in most instances an underlying 

 wedge of Lower Silurian rocks has been driven through the 

 arch. As not on'.y the Carboniferous Limestone, but the rest of 

 the Carboniferous system covered the south of Ireland and 

 participated in this plication, the amount of denudation fmrn 

 these ridges has been enormous. On the Galty range, for 

 example, it can hardly have been le-s but m.ay have been more 

 than 12,000 feet. The third and latet group of Irish moun- 

 tains is that of Mourne and Carlingf.rd, which may with some 

 probability be referred to older Tertiary time when the similar 

 granitic and porphyrilic masses in Mull and Skye were erupted. 

 The tablelands of Britain strictly include the mountains, w Iiich 

 are in gener.al only prominences carved out of tablelands. But 

 there are still large areas in which the plateau character is well 

 shown. Of these the most exten.sive and in many respects 

 the mo«t interesting is the present tableland or plain of 

 Central Ireland. As now exposed, this region lies upon an 

 undulating eroded surface of Carboniferous Limestone. But it 

 was formerly covered by at least 3000 or 4000 feet nio'e of 

 Carboniferous strata, as can be shown by the fragments that 

 remain. The present systeai of drainage across the centie of 

 Ireland took its origin 1 nig before the ancient tableland had 

 been reduced to its present level, and before some of the ridges, 

 now prominent, had been exposed to the light. The Moors and 

 Wolds of Yorkshire present us with a fragment of a tableland 

 co.iiposed of nearly horizontal Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks. 

 The Lammermuir Mills and Southern Uplands of Scotland 

 form a broad tableland which has been formed on a deeply 

 eroded surface of Lower Silurian rocks. 



THE MONK FISH 



]\JATUREN has recently supplied its readers with some in- 

 teresting details concerning the so-called " monk-iish " of 

 the Sound, which may be regarded as the genuine forerunner of 

 the sea-serpent of modern times. Its capture and appearance 

 were deemed worthy of reco'd in Arild Hirtfeld's great " His- 

 tory of Denmark," published in 1595, while portraits of the 

 sea-monk embellished the w-orks cf various Scandinavian and 

 German natural history writers of the middle of the sixteenth 

 century. Among these, Guiil.aume Kondelet, in his great folio 

 work, " Libri de Piscibus Marinis," first chimed the special 

 privilege of giving to the world a facsimile of the authentic 

 likeness of the monk. This, we are assured, had been taken 

 from life for, and in the presence of, a nobleman, who had 

 caused one copy to be made for the Emperor Charles V., and 

 another for Margaret, Queen of Navarre, by whom it was pre- 

 sented to the author. Hirtfcld does not profe-9 to have been 

 brought into such close connection with the original, but he and 

 the historians, Krag an:l Stephanius, agree in reporting that a 

 fish, bearing the semblance of a human head with a monk's 

 shaven crown, and having torn or mutilated limbs indistinctly 

 defined under a scaly covering, was, in the year 1550, captured 

 in the Sound, in a herring-fisher's net, and brought to the King 

 of Denmark, who immediately gave orders that it should be 

 buried de;p underground, " to hinder indiscreet talk among the 

 ignorant, whose minds are always perturbed by what is new." 

 The speedy burial of the monster did not allay the excitement 

 caused by its apparition, and Kondelet found, to his extreme 

 annoyance, that his Swiss friend, Gesner, and other philoso- 

 phers then in Rome, were in possession of other reputed original 

 likenesses of the monk, differing from his own. This circum- 

 stance, he admits, inclined him to suspect that the artist had 

 added "this or that according to fancy to make the fish seem 

 more wonderful than it was in reality." He even confesses that 

 some of the portraits have no more resemblance to a human 

 head than might be detected iu a frog or a toad ; that the ex- 

 tremities look like fins, and that the so-called monk's gown is 

 more like a dark seal's skin than a scaly armour. From these 

 and other corrections, coupled with Gesner's mention of a fish's 



tail having formed part of the monk's body. Prof. Steenstru|j 

 infers that the " monk-fish " was an unusually large specimen of 

 the Loligo or Squid family, whose caudal extremity, bearing 

 probably bruises or other marks on the skin, had acquired in 

 the imagination of the spectators the semblance of a he.ad and 

 neck with torn-off arms, while the arms of the cephalopod had 

 served to represent lacerated extremities. A compari-on of the 

 numerous conflicting conteniforaneous descriptions of the Danish 

 " sea-monk " and of the later " Kraken" of the old Norwegian 

 Bishop Pontoppidan might possibly be not wholly useless in 

 the present day in checking an over ha^ty confidence in the truth 

 of every fresh tale of encounters with sea-serpents, as recorded 

 by credulous seafaring men. We may, in the meanwhile, refer 

 all who are interested in sea-monsters to the July number of 

 NntitrcUy in which they will find a faithful representation of 

 Rondelet's monk-fish, while the September number of the same 

 journal gives reproductions of two characteristic Japanese pic- 

 tures, in one of which a solitary boatman is battling in a stormy 

 sea with a formidable creature, evidently a highly magnified 

 form of octopus, one of whose arms has been severed as it 

 encircled man and boat, while the other arms are represented 

 as striving to draw their prey nearer to the huge head with its 

 protruding eyes. In the second picture, which, if less forcible, 

 is more realistic, we see in the wondering and terrified expres- 

 fion of the assembled men and boys the surprise and alarm ex- 

 cited by the appearance at a fishmonger's stall of two octopus 

 arms, not unlike suspended serpents. The terror of the spec- 

 tacle has communicated itself to domestic animals — a dog hiding 

 himself, while a cat is taking rapid flight up the roof of the 

 house. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE 



O.XFORD. — The Examiners for the Radcliffe Travelling Fellow- 

 ship give notice that the exammation will commence on Feb- 

 ru.ary 20 at 10 a m. in the University Museum. The Examination 

 for the Burdett-Coutts Geological Scholarship will commence on 

 March 3 at 10 a.m. 



Mr. Robert Stockdale, of Giggleswick School, has been 

 elected to a Hastings Exhibitio.n in Natural Science at Queen's 

 College. 



CAMBltlDGE. — The following are the words spoken by the 

 Public Orator in presenting Dr. Hans Gadow (formerly of the 

 British Museum), Curator of the Strickland Collection of Birds, 

 for the complete degree of M.A. honoris causa :^ 



" Dignissime Domine, U.imine Procancellarie et tota Aca- 

 demia : Anni proximi sub finem (iuvat recordari) fabulam illam 

 Ari.-tophanis qua; Aves nominatur cum voluptate maxima propc 

 omnes spectaviinus. Ilodie vero, ad sludia nostra severiora 

 redeuntes, nihil auspicatius esse arbitramur, quam annum novum 

 honore in ilium collato signare qui omnium avium genera et 

 naturas quasi propriam provinciam sibi sumpsit explorandam. 

 Ilium igitur senatoribus nostris hodie merito adscribimus, qui 

 Pomeranise maritinije in parte orientali a gente antiquissima 

 oriundus in celeberrimis Germania; Academiis zoologije, paheon 

 tologise, mineralogia', studiis operam suam feliciter impendit ; 

 qui quarto abhinc anno in Britanniam idcirco est vocatus, ut 

 aves in Museo Britannico conservatas snmma cura describeret ; 

 qui in nostra denique Academia nuper non modo de vertebratis 

 qua: dicuntur animalibus prjelectiones habuit dociissimas, sed 

 etiam thesauris nostris ornithologicis custcdiendis cum fructu 

 nostro njaximo est prscposilus. Inter antiquos quidem avium 

 a volatu cantuque rerum futurarum omina ducebantur ; nos 

 meliora edocti hodie in hoc viro Procancellarii novi auspiciis 

 veram avium ^cientiam laude debita exornamus, ex initio tam 

 felici omnia fausta in futurum augurati. ' Date Candida cives 

 Oiitina, ct inceptis dcxtera caiitet avis.' Vobis prtesento virum 

 et de studiis ornithologicis et de Academia nostra optima meri- 

 tum, Hans Gadow." 



Mr. W. F. R. Weldon, B.A., St. John's College, has been 

 appointed Demonstrator of Comparative Anatomy. 



Mr. Francis Galton, F. K.S., has been appointed Rede Lec- 

 turer for the present year. 



Prof. W. J. Sollas, M.A., late Fellow of St. John's College, 

 First Class "in the Natural Sciences Tripos, 1873, and Mr. P. 

 II. Carpenter, M.A., Trinity College, First Class in the same 

 Tripos, 1874, have been approved for the degree of Doctor of 

 Science. The able original works in Geology and Zoology by 

 both these gentlemen are familiar to .all students. 



